


The Daffodil's Ghost

by GretchenSinister



Series: My Top 10 JackRabbit Fics [1]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:33:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22079260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "Anything playing on the dynamic between a frost spirit and a spring one ;) Since Bunnymund is a Pooka, they are basically polar opposites–which is why they are always at odds–and which is why they’re perfect for each other.Any rating ;) I enjoy innocence and I enjoy debauchery, as long as the romance is there."I think this is the first real Jackrabbit I’ve written. And it’s unrequited love, yay?
Relationships: E. Aster Bunnymund/Jack Frost
Series: My Top 10 JackRabbit Fics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1589287
Comments: 2
Kudos: 52
Collections: JackRabbit Short Fics





	The Daffodil's Ghost

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 5/10/2013.

The ice coating the daffodil is so thin that the flower’s stem doesn’t even bend. It is almost as if the bloom has been preserved in glass, but Bunnymund knows that there is nothing meant to be preserved or permanent about either the ice or the flower.

What he doesn’t know is if the ice has any meaning. Is it a gift? It almost looks like one, but then again, as far as he can tell, winter’s not a very giving season.

Maybe winter just gives gifts that aren’t easy to see as gifts. Bunnymund kneels carefully on the grass near the daffodil, barely feeling the bite of the more ordinary frost that coats it, that is already disappearing where the rising sun (earlier than yesterday) touches it. The sun won’t melt the ice on the daffodil. Gently, oh so gently, he dislodges the fragile layer of ice from the flower, and in a few moments he’s able to stand, holding the ice by its edges in one of his paws.

Away from the flower, the ice is so clear it is almost impossible to see. Bunnymund turns it this way and that, letting it catch a little sunlight so that it gleams. It is a perfect copy of the daffodil, without any of its life. The daffodil’s ghost.

Bunnymund opens his mouth and places the ice daffodil on his tongue. He draws it into his mouth and closes his lips around it, feeling the rough edges of the petals against his palate and gums for a moment before it starts to melt. The cool water trickles down his throat as he feels the flower become less flower-like, his breath erasing the ice as it always does (though usually on a much larger scale). Soon only rounded fragments are left, and he swallows those while they are still ice.

The melted ice tastes like all the water that is his, the pure water of melted snow rushing down swollen streams, hopeful and wild, his water and a hint of the living daffodil’s nectar. Now, he does not think he will ever be able to forget that for water to be his, it must have once been ice.

* * *

_I can only give you what’s already yours._

The boy cracks the ice upstream so that the melting snow will flow in interweaving patterns, and wonders if he’ll notice that it is the ice that allows this beauty to exist.

He adds more ice to one side of a rivulet so that the coming torrent won’t destroy the crocuses along the bank a mile downstream and wonders if he can feel their continuing life and if even these little flowers make him stronger.

He’ll never know these things. Soon enough, he’ll have to retreat even further north. He won’t be able to see Bunnymund’s reactions to what he does, because now, in the height of Spring, he can’t even approach him. Or he could, but they’d fight, even if they didn’t want to. At times like these, they’re Winter and Spring, not Jack and Bunny. More than a few blizzards and battles have taught him that lesson. But more and more he begins to wonder if Bunnymund notices how Winter can touch the spring and not destroy it.

If he thinks there’s something beautiful about the way Winter retreats and Spring advances. Like a dance, when they’re not fighting.

If he realizes Jack has been giving him gifts, even though the gifts are only made of what’s already his.

_But I’m already yours too_.


End file.
